I remember it well, was in my car listening to the radio.Was always concerned that there was no way out for the crew, even if the problem was detected prior to the explosion.I can remember looking at footage of the launch control center, and at the far side of the room was a TV, and on that TV was realtime footage of teh launch and the SRB plume that is clearly visable to anyone who was watching that TV, the rest of the world where watching the TV picture from another (or more standard view), now if someone had noted the plume from the SRB on the TV, there was no abort button to push.. and still is not..

Stolen from the Rogers report: (what is most amazing is how the vehicle is trying to keep alive, a no win situation)

I've looked at the speed of the events, BA was a consultant on senario event investigation for any program the UK would undertake. There was nothing that could have been done. She was literally doomed from the second she left the pad.

Very sad. I'm more shocked about the forcing of the launch for Reagan. Is that comfirmed or is it just rumor?

It's a long standing suspicion that could never be confirmed. NASA doesn't like making Presidents unhappy and making Reagan unhappy is something that would have been in the back of many minds in upper management.

Yes, I think it was based on a rumor that the President wanted to include that a Teacher was able to travel into space on the ship he christened (STS-4 Columbia, end of test flights).

Personally I do not think that would mean NASA was forced to launch and Reagan wouldn't of had anything to do with the risk factor given the blow to the program that it ended up being.

Maybe NASA upper management didn't want to delay for the President, to keep him happy as he was the paymaster at the time. Maybe NASA didn't want to ruin their attempt to have that "year of the Shuttle" after just the second flight.

Whatever it was, it highlighted the arrogance of a time where NASA didn't listen to its contractors or itself when told to launch would be a major risk.

Yes, I think it was based on a rumor that the President wanted to include that a Teacher was able to travel into space on the ship he christened (STS-4 Columbia, end of test flights).

Personally I do not think that would mean NASA was forced to launch and Reagan wouldn't of had anything to do with the risk factor given the blow to the program that it ended up being.

Maybe NASA upper management didn't want to delay for the President, to keep him happy as he was the paymaster at the time. Maybe NASA didn't want to ruin their attempt to have that "year of the Shuttle" after just the second flight.

Whatever it was, it highlighted the arrogance of a time where NASA didn't listen to its contractors or itself when told to launch would be a major risk.

And clearly violated the launch constraints... this is not the same as our current foam issue... IMHO, one was NASA ( upper management) and the the other (foam) was and still is on the head of Lockmart or MSFC... but they seem to be covering each other.. Humm

Whatever it was, it highlighted the arrogance of a time where NASA didn't listen to its contractors or itself when told to launch would be a major risk.

There was plenty of schedule pressure, particularly the Centaur launches off both pads during essentially the same week. But there was also hubris in both shuttle disasters.

Challenger and the 51-L crew were the unlucky ones to be flying when that SRM design failed; however, proverbial bullets had already been dodged -- secondary O-ring erosion in both the case-to-case and the case-to-nozzle joints -- and given the increasing flight rate, I think something was going to break in trying to ramp up to the 24 flights per year they were shooting for back then. (Possibly something besides the booster field joints.)

Out of curiosity, what were the realistic chances of achieving the mammoth flight rates envisaged in the early 1980s. Admittedly, the 24-flights-per-year idea was ludicrous, but would NASA have been able to manage, say, the 14 flights planned for 1986. Was the Shuttle programme technically capable of doing it or would it have ended up similar to 1985 with 9-10 flights?

* The two interplanetary, shuttle/Centaur flights -- Ulysses and then Galileo (61-F/61-G)(Atlantis was getting ready to go out to Pad A for Centaur tanking tests)

* The first Vandenberg launch (62-A)(and possibly 62-B by the end of the year; that schedule was already slipping. Perhaps someone here who was at KSC back then would know whether Discovery was going to be ready to support the rest of the pad validations, such as the planned FRF. She was still at KSC on 28 January.)

It's also interesting to see how short the turnaround times were for individual orbiters in the pre-51L timeframe. Are there any reasons (technical or otherwise) how NASA achieved these six-week-to-two-month turnaround times in the 'olden days' and never again routinely achieved this post-51L? It surely can't all have been due to cost-cutting and safety compromises.

I think the post-51L record was just under three months for STS-83/94, but that was just because it was the same payload on both missions. Generally, post-51L turnarounds have averaged four to six months.

1. Atlantis (61-G) should be launched on May 20 (not on May 21);2. Challenger (61-M) should be launched on July 22 (not on July 15);3. Atlantis (61-J) should be launched in August (not in October);4. 61-N should be launched on Discovery (not on Columbia) on September 4;5. Challenger (61-I) should be launched on September 27;6. Discovery (62-B) should be launched on September 29;7. 61-K should be launched on Columbia (not on Atlantis) in October (not on September 3);8. 61-L should be launched on Atlantis (not on Columbia).

P.S.: Between Challenger (61-F) and Atlantis (61-G) launches were 5 days!PP.S.: Between Discovery launches from KSC (61-N) and from VAFB (62-B) were 25 days!

I was always under the impression that 61N was actually a Columbia mission and have drawn attention to it in my book SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA. A couple of years ago, I spoke to 61N Commander Brewster Shaw, who told me that at the time of the 51L disaster he was expecting to fly a classified DoD mission aboard Columbia in the autumn. The original 61N crew, minus Pilot Mike McCulley and Payload Specialist Frank Casserino, eventually flew Columbia on STS-28.

I very much doubt that, even in the optimistic pre-51L days, a 25-day turnaround would have been possible, let alone a turnaround which also involved flying from coast to coast to launch from different sites.

I think the all-time turnaround record, actually achieved, was about 51 days for Atlantis on the 51J/61B turnaround, in which she landed from her first mission on October 7th 1985 and next launched on November 27th. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the Shuttle ever beat that.